1. Field of the Invention
This invention generally relates to carrier phase tracking, and, more specifically, to an iterative carrier phase tracking decoding system using a serial turbo decoder.
2. Related Art
The carrier phase of a signal can meander with time, due to instabilities in the transmitter upconversion circuitry, or instabilities in the demodulator oscillator and downconversion circuitry. The presence of this phase noise degrades the performance of a receiver, by creating a phase rotation in the actual signaling constellation with respect to the assumed signaling constellation. Since the phase noise typically varies at a much slower rate than the transmitted symbol rate, this phase noise trend can often be estimated (e.g. “tracked”), and subsequently compensated for by circuits within the receiver. However, at low SNRs (i.e., Es/No values), such as those at which turbo decoders operate, this phase noise can be difficult to accurately track and compensate for, because the phase trend is difficult to distinguish from the noise. For example, at low Es/N0 values, uncoded 8-PSK symbol error rates of 20-30% have been experienced. At such high error rates, decision-oriented phase tracking loops within a conventional demodulator can experience great difficulty in following phase trends. Since phase tracking is imperfect, the result is a higher than desired bit error rate (BER). Even if the phase trend can be tracked, current phase tracking loops may only be sufficient to prevent cycle slippage of the signal constellation. A significant amount of phase error may still be present in the received symbols.